Thirty and Seven

Kevin Smith is a genius. I can’t recall if I’ve ever really written about him here or just how much I dote on him. If you have no idea who he is, allow me to offer up a quick enlightenment session. Kevin Smith is the brilliant writer/director behind the following amazing films in chronological order: Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, and Jersey Girl. He also had a big part in getting Good Will Hunting made, albeit only as a producer. If you haven’t seen any of those movies, you haven’t lived. Or maybe you just haven’t lived long enough…cause seriously, if you’re under 17 you shouldn’t be watching them. I take no responsibility if you do. Anywho, what I love most about his movies is the dialogue. If I can develop my writing to become even half of what he can do with words, I will be a content soul. Sure, he tends to write about inappropriate subject matter, but he does so in the most luminous way. There’s no other way that I could describe the movies, you just have to see them for yourself.

Going along the same lines, one question I tend to get by reader of this blog is “hey, what’s with 37?” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please direct your attention to the line of text directly under “The Niblog” at the tope of this page. See it? Good. It is an homage to Kevin Smith. Besides having the same characters appear in all of his movies – excluding Jersey Girl – he also has a consistently reappearing number: 37. I’m not aware of the history behind it for him, but I have made it my own lucky number. Sometimes I feel a little guilty and think about using 39 instead since it lies in between 37 and 41, which was the number assigned to Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur when he becomes a slave.

But back to my story. The other day, 37 kept showing up everywhere I went. This is how it all went down. Tuesday morning I wake up and go online to check my grade on a test. Turns out I got 37 out of 40. Way better than I expected, and a great number. Then after I was done with my classes, I go see my advisor to discuss what I should take in upcoming semesters. She tells me to go and apply to get into the School of Communications which is in room 2037. I chuckle to myself and head on over there and fill everything out. Soon after, I get picked up by my mother and head on over to Best Buy, but make a stop at Burger King first. The drive thru line is too long so I go inside and order my food. “Thank You, you’re order #137”. I couldn’t believe it, I look down at the receipt and there it was. 137. So then finally we head to Best Buy, where I purchased the movie that was just released that day: Mallrats: 10th Anniversary Edition.

Final thoughts: movies are fun. So fun in fact, that I made it the object of my second poem for my creative writing class. The criteria: write a detail/list poem.

From A-Z…Minus Q
By: Munib Rezaie

An anchor in the 70s who is in his prime
And two guys in a phone booth traveling through time
Are just some of the things you will find in this rhyme
A man whispers “Rosebud” with his last dying breath
While a cop from New York drops Hans down to his death
A cross-dressing filmmaker pursues his life’s dream
Until Dory finds Nemo in the final scene
So they make him an offer he cannot refuse
Not knowing Big Red was in the evening news
Where he monologued his way to his own demise
Before Justice could clear up all of her lies
Meanwhile O-Ren is sliced up by the Bride
After Frodo and Sam have climbed up Mt. Doom’s side
They are just in time to meet the Architect
Which brings us to the middle of the alphabet
A man reads from a notebook, a story for her
Though the guy in the cubicle just wants his stapler
So he has a taste of her 5-dollar shake
While the ill-fated lovers leave death in their wake
‘Till they meet a young boy who sees dead people afloat
And laughs at the fat guy in a little coat
But it turned out that Verbal was the mastermind
Who hid the elders’ big secret, except from the blind
So they burn down their house with their mother indoors
While the fate of the world’s left to homo-superiors­
Unable to escape his last name’s destiny
Or the blind samurai named Zatoichi

The person who is able to name all of the movies therein will win absolutely nothing. Instead, you will simply satisfy my curiosity in wanting to know who can get them all. Show me what you got.

...in our business, you're bound to rub out someone you know

Aspiring Writitude

So one of the books I had to read for my creative writing was Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. She gives a lot of what I consider to be very good writing tips and exercises. One such exercise is simply writing. The steps are as follows:

1) Create a designated notebook for timed writing.
2) Allocate a specific time frame.
3) Write.

The only rules in this activity are that you cannot lift your pen from the paper until that time is up. Ignore punctuations and don’t cross anything out. What you’re trying to do here is get what she calls “first thoughts” out on the paper. Since the brain has an automatic censoring system, you’re trying to bypass that completely and just write the very first thing that comes to mind. Not what we pretend are the first things due to the whole censure thing. Obviously this takes longer to achieve for some than for others. I just did this exercise today for the third or fourth time and it automatically sorta came out in the form of a blog entry. So I thought I’d just post it. I gave myself 20 minutes. It’s kinda long…592 words according to MSWord. So feel free to skip the italicized part of this post if you just wanna read something about Guy Ritchie’s new movie Revolver.

It’s amazing how life changes so fast. No matter how much I talk about it or write about it, it n ever ceases to amaze me. Seeing an old friend today after a year of absence was great. We kept in touch mostly through text messages and AIM over the years. Actually that’s the only way we talked along with the occasional email. Finally we decided it was time to actually see each other and everything just picked up like nothing ever happened. No time in between where we didn’t see each other. Still talking about events that took place almost 2 years ago like they just happened 2 days ago. Then on the other side of the coin you got those people who you’ve talked to a lot on the phone and no matter how many times you see them, it’s just not a comfortable situation. Actually I think most people I know are like that. Specifically from my high school days I mean. This one person is one of the few of the former. You know who you are and I am eternally grateful for your friendship no matter how many times you have threatened to end my life. What a world we live in. So I’m thinking about writing a book. Humorously enough, people have been telling me that for several years and I just sorta went along in a joking manner. But now that I’m actually pursuing writing as a source of income, I am taking that proposition seriously. But then, where would I begin? That’s always been my biggest problem. Beginning. Where to start? How the crap am I supposed to know where to start? So usually by the time I discover a way to begin whatever it is that I wanna write, I already have most of the body of the composition figured out in one form or another. So we’ll see how that goes. I’m not even exactly sure what to write about. I have so many random anecdotes floating around in my head that to find a starting point seems impossible. Would I write about my travels and sojourns in different countries? About the people I believe influenced me the most? About the Baha’i Faith, which has undoubtedly been the single consistent strand in my life that has held it all together? About the women in my life? Ha. Or maybe about the insanities of high school drama? Got plenty of experience in that department. Or how about just movies or something? That might be fun. But it wouldn’t have anything to do with me. Oh well. We’ll see how that goes. If anyone could give me some suggestions would be fantacular. This writing exercise is pretty fun. Hopefully I’ll accomplish the goal of filling up at least one notebook each month. But then what? I’d just have a pile of dated notebooks. Notebooks which will be impossible to read, even by myself. My handwriting sucks and I have failed tests because of this problem. Not being able to read your own notes most definitely sucks. On a scale of ‘good’ to ‘bad’, this situation would fall under ‘most heinous’. And now my time is almost up. Three minutes to get to 20 minutes. Maybe next time I shouldn’t look at the time because then I’ll start writing about it. Like now. But this is not so bad. One sheet covered front and back in 20 minutes. 99 sheets to go and one notebook will be out of the way.

Hi again. Yeah so that’s that. If you skipped that, here’s the summary in the form of an equation:

friends = good
writing = good
however, friends ≠ writing.

So if anyone has any suggestions as to how a book can be written, please leave comments. Don’t let that word verification thing intimidate you. I was getting way too much spam.

And, as promised, a word on Revolver. I don’t know. I love Guy Ritchie and all. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch are two of my favorite movies. I haven’t seen Swept Away yet. But I did see the trailer for Revolver and I can see his signature in the images and all. At the same though, it looks totally different. It feels a lot darker and more serious. From what I’ve heard, those dumb critics at the Toronto Film Festival have all been bashing it. If you’re a loyal reader, you know that I really don’t care about what they say. It just worries me since it’s what the majority of moviegoers will base their judgments on before even watching the movie. Knowing full well that humans tend to latch on to movies’ faults, you begin to see where the problem lies. Fools. It’s supposed to be his return to his “roots”, but I have a feeling that it’s going to be a lot different than what people are expecting. By “roots”, I mean bankable movies. And by “people”, I mean his fans...the rest of you are just animals.


...what you call discovery, i call the rape of the natural world

An Exercise in Detachment

As some people know, one of the classes I’m taking this semester is Intro to Creative Writing. It’s a class that meets just once a week, but it is terrific. So anyway, one of the assignments is that each week we must write a poem according to certain specifications. Then we make copies for everyone in the class, read them out loud, and share what we like about each other’s works. You’re actually very free to do whatever you like, the only thing that changes is the style of the poem. For example, the first week it was supposed to be about an obsession you have. Then the next week we had to write a list poem; which is exactly what it sounds like. One example we were shown was this poem where this guy just goes alphabetically naming different kinds of seashells…and that was it.

Anywho, one of the biggest problems I’ve always had whenever I write poems is that I have a very hard time reading it to people. Sooo, I thought I could try posting them here, and this suggestion has been met with encouragement. This way, everyone has the opportunity to see it at the same time and I am detaching myself from my work simultaneously. Good times all around. We’ve only done two poems so far in class so I guess I’ll post the first one here and now. Then I’ll put the second one on my next post just so I have something to write about later. Keep in mind that the rhyming scheme sounds right in my head when I read it with a certain rhythm, so if it doesn’t sound quite right when you read it…you’re just dumb.

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Peace Market
By: Munib Rezaie

Open up your eyes and look side to side
At our brothers and sisters keeping their minds closed out of pride
Prejudice will be accepted as society’s norm
Until one soul speaks up against majority’s swarm
And tries to get the people to see with the eyes of love
Instead of taking aim and shooting down the great white dove
When will the people see all the pain that they have caused?
While stepping on the souls of those whose path their lives have crossed
Now is the time to act, why does the wait get longer?
Mankind is one, and so is God, peace is not up for barter.
There is one race, the human race, the rest is only colors
As soon as we come to see this, there will be no more martyrs

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So yeah. Feel free to leave feedback. Actually I highly encourage you to leave honest and brutal feedback. Think of it as helping out an aspiring artist; cause that’s exactly what you’d be doing.



...it is the sworn duty of all officers to try to escape

Logically Speaking

So. As I write, I have no idea when my last update was, but it feels like it’s been an eternity. Ever since Katrina came over and tussled us about, our internet connection has never been the same. She messed up the wireless network that took me several days to figure out how to set up a few months ago. And as of right now, I have absolutely no idea how I even accomplished that. Point being: only one computer may be online at a time. But if someone needs the fax, like right now, internet access is denied to all inhabitants of my home. Improvisation. Adapt to the environment. That’s the key. As such, I now sit by my laptop typing up this entry in MSWord while I await the long overdue fax that is to come through within the next few hours. All the while, might I add, entirely unsure of what the topic of this entry will be. So I think I’ll just sit here and ponder for a bit.

For some reason that song by Audioslave just popped into my head, I think it’s called Doesn’t Remind Me. If you haven’t heard it yet, the whole song is basically this guy listing all kinds of stuff that he likes merely because it doesn’t remind him of anything. Stuff like gospel music and driving backwards in the fog. It’s a great song and it always reminds me of things. Bit I think his little list of things that don’t remind him of anything is questionable. So I tried to come up with a list of my own…and failed miserably. I mean it seems like a futile attempt to even undertake. All of the little things that he lists surely reminded him of something. Even if that something is nothing, it still is something: nothing. But that seems highly unlikely. Maybe the actual act of driving backwards in the fog doesn’t remind me of that night when I drove backwards in the fog, but it links up to other stuff. To stay with that same example: I like to drive backwards fast, I find it enjoyable. When people drive backwards fast and well, I find it very impressive. One such person who impressed me with his backwards-driving skills was my cousin James. I witnessed this event while I was visiting him and his family in Minnesota. Therefore, using the process of logic as set forth by the great ancient philosophers, one can surmise that driving backwards in the fog reminds me of my family in Minnesota and the great time I spent with them. It seems implausible to find something that doesn’t remind you of anything. The human brain innately tries to form connections between objects and memories it already has in storage. Isn’t that the whole basis of metaphors and analogies? I can point over there and say “What a pig!” and your mind will probably associate what I’m mentally pointing at with a disheveled and possibly malodorous person. But you’d be wrong, because I’m actually pointing at a large farm animal.

So for the past month or two I’ve been monitoring all of the search entries that have led people to my blog and I have to admit it’s quite humorous. What follows is a comprehensive list of all the entries submitted from the recent past:

- weather is depressing
- sweet irony mean
- things to do while waiting in line
- alex trebek is a vegetarian
- niblog
- waiting in line to see revenge of the sith
- sin city soundbytes
- coat over puddle
- Olde goode
- moonib blog
- chatting abbreviation
- nibster blog
- gun pointing toilet scene
- chatting acronyms
- free screen name kid give people screen names
- brazil chicken eating spider
- maryam rezaie
- what diet did brad pitt use for fight club

Quite the source of laughter if you ask me.

Also I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the people who have been giving me words of encouragement in the recent journey I’ve embarked on towards becoming a writer. You know who you are. And though my immediate replies to your compliments might seem passive, please know that your words truly mean a lot. Something as simple as being told “that’s so you” is enjoyable beyond words.



... if it can be told, where did you take on this fine bundle of lettuce?

...And in the Red Corner: Mother Earth

So the news of the hurricane has been all over the news as of late. I myself wasn't sure how bad it was until i saw the images on TV earlier today. Having gotten hit with the storm when it was still just a category 1 hurricane, it didn't do quite nearly as much damage as what it's done so far in other parts of the country. But TV was one of the things it did take away, so I never saw the whole effect of the storm until recently. It really caught everyone by surprise down here in Miami though. The Thursday that it hit, I was on my way to meet up with a friend after convincing ourselves that "it's like a catagory 0.5, it's nothing". Then on my way it started to rain. First lightly. Then harder. And harder. So finally I called him up and said it's better to call it off. Then I get home and a few hours later electricity is gone, as are our cell phones' reception for some reason. We were one of the lucky ones since the lights came back on about a day and a half later. But as I type this, there are still many friends who have no electricity. The whole mess just goes to show how much you really cannot predict what our sweet sweet Mother Earth is planning to do. Dear Gaia has her own ways and no meteorologist will ever be able to predict her movements, no matter how much schooling he has completed.

Anywho, I was sitting around trying to come up with something to say about the whole thing and as I distracted myself, I came across what my cousin Jeff from Minnesota had to say about it in his blog. When I read it, I immediately acknowledged the fact that I could never say it better myself. Instead of trying to top it, I'm just going to copy and paste it over here:

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Usually this blog is a place of laughter. But my heart goes to my brothers and sisters (and their families around the world) suffering in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast. I truly pray for their protection. Here is a passage relevant to this tragedy:

"Furthermore, these events have deeper reasons. Their object and purpose is to teach man certain lessons...The purpose is that the people of the world may turn to God, the One Protector; that human souls may rely upon His preservation and know that He is the real safety. These events happen in order that man's faith may be increased and strengthened. Therefore, although we feel sad and disheartened, we must supplicate God to turn our hearts to the Kingdom and pray...with faith in His infinite mercy. "

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Jeff Anderson, I salute you.


...i almost did succumb, but then i turbaned up, and i feel a lot better